Georgy Girl

Vanessa Redgrave backed out of the role of Georgy just before shooting started. Her sister Lynn picked up the part instead.

Lynn Redgrave's Best Actress Oscar nomination for this movie coincided with sister Vanessa's similar nomination for "Morgan! (1966)." Such a coincidence had occurred only once before when sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland, respectively vied for the Best Actress Oscar for "Suspicion (1941)" and "Hold Back the Dawn (1941)." Fontaine was the only winner of the four actresses in this particular curiosity.

Lynn Redgrave said of this movie in Sheridan Morley's biographical book "James Mason: Odd Man Out" (1989): "I couldn't have had a better start than with James. From the very first day on the set, he treated me as an equal, never patronizing, but always ready with advice and encouragement if you seemed to need it. They kept pulling the plug on the film because they said that James and I and (Sir) Alan Bates didn't add up to much at the box-office, but in the end, we got it made because of James' enthusiasm for the quirkiness of the story, and the chance it gave him to go back to his Yorkshire accent. He took very little money for it, and we all thought it was just going to be a low-budget release, so when it became such a huge success, it was all the more lovely for those of us who'd always had faith in it. James made me feel that if I tried I could do anything, even sing that song, and he told me always to close my eyes just before the camera started to roll. First because it would help to concentrate my mind on the scene, and second it would make my pupils look bigger and better. I've always remembered to do that."

James Leamington (James Mason) tries to romance Georgy Parkin (Lynn Redgrave). Lynn's mother, Rachel Kempson, played Mason's bedridden wife Ellen.

Lynn Redgrave, in an interview with Leonard Probst, said she thought her character in this movie was "very ruthless. Most people saw her as a sweet softy. I don't think she was a softy at all. She was manipulating and very shrewd. People loved her, I think, because they recognized their own terrible faults, and were glad to see them put up on the screen."